In the people who use their suffering as a fuel for their art, or an opportunity to grow stronger and exercise resilience.In the person who still makes a point of smiling, laughing, and joking around even when they’ve been given a morbid diagnosis.Frankl saw it in the concentration camps, exemplified in those who held on their humanity and their dignity despite what they were subjected to, who showed virtue even in the heart of darkness. Human beings all have a tremendous capacity to transmute life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive - to make the best out of any given circumstance. To not let what happens, or what will happen, turn us down the road of the pessimist, the fatalist, the defeatist, and so on… Tragic optimism simply means remaining optimistic in spite of the tragic nature of life and the suffering we all face on its path.

There’s a case for tragic optimism in this tragic world precisely because of our ability to find meaning despite it. When life is inherently composed of such things, when we are all destined to feel pain, guilt, and eventually the finality of death, how can we make life a thing of meaning? How can we say yes to life in spite of it? To, as Frankl said, “Say yes to life in spite of everything.”Īs Frankl learned from his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps, and as we can derive from his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, life can have meaning to it under any conditions, even the worst-as Milton said, our minds can make hell out of heaven, or heaven out of hell. Why be optimistic when we’re all given a guarantee of life’s barbs? It’s easy to scoff at optimism in general. To fall into the apparent meaninglessness of it, the void that is pain and suffering and loss, the perception that life is only suffering.

It is tempting to take a pessimist’s view of life. Life has, as Viktor Frankl derived from logotherapy, a tragic triad, aspects of the human existence that cannot be escaped: pain, guilt, and death. The business of living is not an easy thing, nor is it always pleasant. Some people focus on one side over another, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there - or that it won’t affect them. There is a duality to life, and by nature all things:

Case of tragic optimism